With trash contracts set to expire, local towns urged to consider regionalization

Tuesday

Jan 26, 2010 at 12:01 AMJan 26, 2010 at 11:23 AM

When it comes to trash disposal, state and county officials are urging towns to regionalize their contracts to save thousands of dollars, and officials from nine southeastern Massachusetts towns are listening. A regional selectmen’s meeting was held Jan. 14 held in Kingston.

Casey Meserve

When it comes to trash disposal, state and county officials are urging towns to regionalize their contracts to save thousands of dollars, and officials from nine southeastern Massachusetts towns are listening.

“There are regional opportunities to save on costs,” Brooke Nash of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Municipal Waste Reduction Program, said during a regional selectmen’s meeting Jan. 14 held in Kingston.

Throughout the state, communities are banding together to negotiate contracts that save towns money. On the North Shore, more than 30 towns went out to bid on a five-year waste disposal contract. Collectively, the towns negotiated a $30 per ton tipping fee. The current average is $85 to $90 per ton, Nash said. The contract saves the towns involved thousands of dollars, each year. The DEP, Plymouth County Commissioners, and South Shore Recycling Cooperative said the same thing: Towns need to put aside their differences and go after the services they need collectively in order to save money. Gov. Deval Patrick has decided to keep the moratorium on incinerators in place, but that does not preclude towns from going elsewhere with their trash.

Claire Sullivan, director of the South Shore Recycling Cooperative, suggested that towns look at their trash contracts and those of their neighbors and begin asking for contract extensions with SEMASS until every town’s contract expires in the same year, “then, you can work together to negotiate a good deal with SEMASS,” Sullivan said.

Communities in southeastern Massachusetts are facing difficult decisions in the near future as their contracts with SEMASS, the trash to energy incinerator located in Rochester. Starting last year, SEMASS began courting its customers, asking towns to renegotiate their current contracts with promises of lower tipping fees than the going rate in the next contract. Whitman currently pays $93 a ton for SEMASS to burn its trash, creating electricity that it sells. SEMASS also receives tax credits for incinerating trash.

Selectmen from Carver, East Bridgewater, Halifax, Hanson, Hanover, Lakeville, Pembroke and Whitman had their own trash concerns.

Other towns, such as Kingston, so-called “tier one communities,” were among the first to sign contracts with SEMASS in the 1980s. Kingston pays a tipping fee of $34.52 per ton. The contract SEMASS is suggesting would double the current fee to approximately $76 per ton, which is still lower than the market rate of $100 per ton tipping fee predicted in 2015, according to a memo by Kingston Town Administrator Jill Myers. A new contract with below market costs may look good to some towns, but other options exist, such as the landfill in Bourne.

Solid waste disposal costs make up about 3 percent of a town’s annual budget, which might not seem like a lot, but is still thousands of dollars each year. In Kingston, solid waste disposal costs more than $15,000 each year. Saving money on small costs can add up for towns dealing with decreases in tax collections and less state aid, Nash said.

“The bright spot in the dismal fiscal climate is that tipping fees are going down because the amount of trash is decreasing because of decreases in construction,” Nash said. “If you own a landfill or an incinerator, the drop in tonnage hurts. They are down between 15 and 30 percent. SEMASS can’t just shut down the burners. This is an opportune time to work together to bring tipping fees down.”

Plymouth County Administrator Troy Clarkson echoed Nash’s statements.

“There are other opportunities that do not include increased costs,” Clarkson said.

Plymouth County is also considering developing a waste management facility on a 100-acre site it owns in the town of Plymouth, where solid waste could be stockpiled and the county could contract with SEMASS or Bourne to accept the waste, Clarkson said.

“Bourne is wide-open for anything,” Don Barrett, general manager of Bourne’s Integrated Solid Waste Management department, told selectmen. “If you get together with Troy or South Shore Recycling I’m going to give you a better price.”

Bourne is willing to negotiate lower fees than what SEMASS is offering, or negotiate with a group of towns under one contract. Hanover has a solid waste contract with Bourne, and Selectman Pallotta said the contract has been good for his town so far. Barrett said he offered the town of Plymouth a 20-year, $70 per ton contract, but Plymouth recently signed a contract with SEMASS for another 20 years. Plymouth’s current contract expires in 2014.

“Why would you be willing to give us a better price as a group?” Pallotta asked Barrett.

“Because we want your business,” Barrett said.

County Commissioner Anthony O’Brien said his office could get to work on a regionalization pact for the towns of Plymouth County this week.

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